LogInUnsurprisingly, the exact production value has not been disclosed.
It feels like newsworthy events tied to Ubisoft never come alone. Following last week's debacle over the CEO appointing his son to head the Tencent subsidiary – which broke two months of the studio's relative radio silence – the company has stolen headlines again over the weekend with a series of notable, and more often than not questionable, statements.
One such statement concerns what is arguably one of the most controversial AAA releases of the past decade, Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed Shadows, a game that had stirred innumerable disputations even before its twice-delayed release. While the game did release back in March, and the interest in it has largely faded since then, one question still lingers among the gaming community: was all the controversy really worth it in the end?
Ubisoft
Continuing the tradition of beating around the bush and refusing to reveal any concrete numbers related to Shadows – instead asking us to trust them and select gaming journalists that the game was a great success – Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot delivered yet another non-answer on this topic during a recent shareholders meeting.
When pressed about AC Shadows' production costs and sales figures, Guillemot declined to provide any specific numbers, stating only that they "don't disclose production costs." He did, however, mention that Shadows cost over €100 million – around $116 million – to develop, market, and publish, but still, considering the rising costs of AAA games and the rumored budgets of some of the previous Ubisoft titles – looking at you, Skull and Bones with its alleged $650-850 million cost – it's clear the actual figure is far higher than 100 million euros.
Needless to say, the game's sales and revenue numbers also went undisclosed, leaving the community to guesstimate just how profitable it truly was. Fortunately, Ubisoft's financial report for FY 2024-25 included a breakdown of net bookings by platform, giving us at least some numbers to work with.
Based on Ubisoft's own breakdown, in FY 2024-25, console sales outperformed PC sales by roughly a 3:2 ratio – 45% versus 31%. Assuming this ratio stayed about the same in Q1 2026, the next step is to estimate the number of sales on at least one marketplace, and fortunately, we have those figures for Steam.
According to Gamalytic's estimates, Shadows has sold at most 853,000 copies on Steam, which seems about right given the game's dismal concurrent player numbers for a AAA project on that platform. Adding 20% to account for sales on the Ubisoft Store and Epic Games Store – a percentage based on Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney's assessment, plus an additional 5% to be generous – gives us an estimated 1,023,600 copies sold on PC.
Returning to the previously mentioned ratio, we can approximate console sales to be around 1,535,400 units, bringing the total Assassin's Creed Shadows sales to 2,559,000 copies. At a $70 price point minus a 30% distribution fee, this translates to roughly $125.3 million – only slightly above the $116 million figure disclosed by Ubisoft's CEO – casting some serious doubts on the company's assurances that the game was a success.
That said, please keep in mind that no matter how generous they might be, these figures are estimates based on other estimates and, for instance, don't account for the Deluxe Edition or the game selling for less than $70 in numerous regions. As such, they should not be taken as Shadows' actual earnings, which could just as easily be higher than $125 million or significantly lower.
So, what would be your guesstimate for AC Shadows' sales and revenues? What formula would you use to gauge those numbers? Is your figure higher or lower than $125 million? Let us know down in the comments!
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